10 Tips to Get More from Your iPad

If you’re one of those dozens of millions of lucky iPad owners, you probably find yourself tapping your fingers on it quite often with pride and joy. But no matter how awesome the iPad may be, you can probably make it even more awesome by utilizing it further.

We believe that everyone has the right to optimize their iPad experience, even those who aren’t on the most tech-savvy side of things. These tips can help you easily improve your iPad user-experience, learn new things and use it more efficiently.

Got any more iPad tips? Share it with us in the comments with the entire Wix community!

Search Word on Page

Who doesn’t love the old CTRL+F command that lets you search for a specific word on a web page? Good news – you can do that with your iPad too! When viewing a page, start typing your search term in the search engine field at the top right. You’ll see that at the bottom of the suggestions box, the line “On this Page” appears and indicates if the word you’re searching for exists.

Use Your iPad as a GPS

The broad screen and the great sound quality make the iPad a terrific device for navigation help on the road. To use it more comfortably, you will need an iPad car mount, but you can get those for a very low price (MUCH lower than buying an extra GPS device). There are dozens of great GPS apps available for iPad, some even for free (like Waze or TeleNav).

Customize Your Safari Settings

For many iPad users, Safari wouldn’t have been the first browser choice. Alas, Apple has its own rules. This doesn’t mean you can’t personalize your browser settings and make them more suitable for you!

Go to Settings and click on the Safari tab. You will be able to choose a fixed search engine (surprise surprise, the default is Google); turn the pop-up blocker on and off; have the bookmark bar always present and more.

BTW, if you’re having problems with accessing websites, you may want to go to the Safari tab to clear cache and cookies – just like on your computer!

Use iMessage to Text

This tool, available on devices with iOS 5, is a texting service that runs on an internet connection. This means that everyone you know with iOS 5 devices (iPhone, iPads and even iPods) can text you for free, and vice versa. These texts can include pictures from your library or those you take on the spot, as well as videos.

To activate iMessage on your iPad, go to Settings and to the Messages tab. There, simply turn on iMessages and log into the platform. Messages that are sent on the iMessage platform appear as blue instead of green (for regular texts).

Customize Your Email Settings

One of the most common uses of smart devices is checking emails. Few people actually bother to edit their email settings, even though it’s so easy to do.

You simply go to Settings, click on “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”, and you can play around with the email set up. For instance, you can turn the “Always BCC myself” field on. Or you can decide you want more than 2 lines of preview from each email in your inbox. And if you prefer something more creative than “Sent from my iPad”, you can also edit your email signature.

Use Your iPad as a Second Monitor

Inside information: Wix employees are all required to work with double monitors. This is not considered a treat from the company, it’s a practical move that speeds up the work flow. We’re talking from experience when we say that using your iPad as a second monitor will increase your productivity, reduce work duration and make your life easier!

Turning your iPad into a screen requires purchasing an app (AirDisplay seems to be the most popular one, but you may run into something better and cheaper), but can save you money in the long term by increasing your work efficiency.

Learn the Keyboard Tricks

Keyboards always seem to be weaker side of touch screen devices, but sometimes you can improve your relationship with them by getting to know them better. There are many keyboard secrets on the iPad that aren’t commonly known and used. Here’s a nice presentation that shares some of those tips, from special characters to relocating the keyboard.

Image Source: Business Insider

Set Up Your Restrictions

This issue is especially helpful for parents, but also for anyone who wants to be more in control over what their iPad is doing. Go to Settings > General and click Restrictions. The first time you do this, you will need to enable Restrictions and to enter a passcode that will later be used to manage them.

Once you’re in, you can disable certain features like in-app purchases, deny access to R-rated films, review which apps have access to your location info and disable if necessary, and many more.

Close Running Apps

Not many users are aware of the fact that once they leave an app and return to the desktop, the app continues to run and keeps on eating up battery-life. Be nice to your iPad’s battery and close those apps that aren’t in use – especially those that take up a lot of energy. To do this, simply double-click the Home button. You will see a bar with all open apps at the bottom of the screen. Press one until a red icon appears on the top left corner of all open apps. To close an app, simply click on that icon.

Play Slideshows with Music

Ok, this isn’t a usability tip that will boost your iPad, but it’s a really fun thing to do with your photos. Go to your photo library and click Slideshow on the top right corner. Then turn the Play Music option on, choose your tunes from your music library and start the show. It can be a hilarious and often quite moving pastime. You can also edit the photo transitions if you want to get fancy. For special occasions, you can create a unique photo album and play it with your favorite music.

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